Florence-Lauderdale Public Library
Interview with Leroy Makinson
June 8, 2011
Florence, Alabama
Conducted by Clint Alley and Rhonda Haygood
Clip 1
Clint Alley: Well, today is June 8, 2011. We’re at the Florence-Lauderdale Public Library with Mr. Leroy Makinson. Makinson...am I saying that right?
Leroy Makinson: That’s correct.
CA: Okay, and I’m Clint Alley and we’re here with Rhonda Haygood. Mr. Makinson, you, we'll start out by just asking you, if you don’t mind telling us, when and where you were born.
LM: I was born on May the 14th of 1929 in Council Bluffs, Iowa on the Missouri River and across from Omaha, Nebraska.
CA: How, how did you wind up in Florence?
LM: Ah, well, after I got out of the service, they passed a GI bill for Korean War veterans, so I went off to school and went to Iowa State University and studied engineering and I went to work afterwards for Alcoa up in, ah, they had a plant similar to the one they had out here at Reynolds, in size and scope, and, ah, as an engineer and then several years later, Reynolds contacted me because I knew somebody at this plant that I’d gone to school with and they offered me a job, so I came down here in 1958. I stayed here until 1986 and I was transferred to Richmond, Virginia. I held various jobs out here; I was an industrial engineer and a supervisor and a manager of the department for eight years and then I was a division engineer in, in Virginia.
CA: Um-hm. Okay.
LM: Travelled around quite a bit.
CA: Okay. Ah, and you were in the United States Air Force?
LM: That’s correct.
CA: Okay, how did you wind up in the Air Force? Were you drafted?
LM: No, I graduated from high school in 1947 and I went to work for the Union Pacific Railroad, which I had worked for during World War II, when I was sixteen years old, when they were desperate for young men of any kind. And then I went to work for them after I got out of high school and I worked for a year and then, ah, repairing steam engines of all things, the old steamers. So, ah, in 1948 somehow I got interested in going into the service and my brother had joined the Army in June of that year and in August of 1948 I joined the Air Force. The Air Force had been separated from – it was just the Army Air Force, or Army, until 1947, and they separated it in late ’47 into a separate service and so I joined in 1948 with the promise that I could go to a school. And so I picked out – I said, “Well, I want to be an aircraft mechanic.” And they had just started the jet airplanes, so I said, “I want to go to school and be a jet airplane mechanic.” So, eventually, after I went to service, they, a few months later, after I went through my basic training, they sent me to Rantoul, Illinois where I went to school for nine months to be a airplane mechanic and then, ah, this was right at the end of the Berlin air lift, that was going on in Germany at that time and they needed propeller mechanics so they converted me with some additional training that made me a propeller airplane mechanic. And I ended up in Massachusetts and then later transferred to Bermuda and that was in September of 1949, when I went to Bermuda. Of course the Korean War began on June the 25th, 1950 and immediately the United States was involved because they were afraid that Russia was gonna get involved, so they sent hundreds and hundreds of airplanes, bombers and other pieces of equipment to Europe because they were afraid that the Russians would somehow intervene since they did have an interest in North Korea.
CA: Yeah.
LM: They had taken over North Korea at the end of World War II and the United States, of course, took the southern half and that’s why they ended up with what they call the 38th parallel so we figured that they—the interest of Russia was involved in Europe as well, so, the United States transferred a lot of forces to Europe, so we repaired airplanes. And I stayed in Bermuda I think about twenty-two months and in July of 1951 they transferred me back to the States and I went to Selfridge Air Force Base in—north of Detroit, Michigan in Mount Clemens, Michigan and I was in Air-Sea Rescue. They put me on a flying crew. So that year that I was there I spent a lot of hours in the air. That was back in the days when the Air Force had lots of pilots and not as many planes after World War II and, so, we had more, we had more pilots than we had planes and the pilots had to fly so many hours a month to get their flight pay and I, of course, I had to do it too and I had to fly four hours a month, but, because they were, had such a shortage of pilots, I mean, of planes, I flew three hundred and some hours that year, you know. And we would, ah, tra—, do training flights or fly rescue and we trained parachute jumpers you know we’d jump out and, and the planes that we flew could land either on the water or on snow or, and they were fairly large airplanes that would hold fifteen or twenty people. And so I did that until July of 1952. I might add that, of course, like everyone else in the service at that time, once the war started in July of 1950, they had to – the President of the United States, Harry Truman, then added everybody an extra year of service, they just gave us twelve months extra service and so what started out to be three years became four years.
CA: So did you ever, ah, jump out of a plane with a parachute, yourself?
LM: No, but I would have. Of course we wore parachutes and the parachutes that we wore were, looked like, they had, they were just a front chute, ah we had a harness that we – and it had, a, two big D clips up here [Mr. Makinson indicates the location of the clips just below each shoulder] and when we put those on, you’d have to tighten them up real tight. Then we’d leave the parachute pack itself by the back door, and then, of course, you could run out of, ‘cause if you’re up in the cockpit you don’t have much room and, ah, so we’d run by the back door and just grab one of those chutes and clip it on and, but, you know, if they ever caught on fire, I, I was g—, I was out, I was gone.
CA: You knew exactly where that parachute was.
LM: And they’d tell you how to do it, you know. CA: Um-hm.
LM: When to pull it and whether you’re upside down or straight down or face-up or whatever and show you how to pull the chute so that you wouldn’t get caught in your chute as it opened and so forth. But no, I never really did have to jump. But it was an interesting year; I, I enjoyed that stint in Michigan. I enjoyed my stint on Bermuda, because obviously, it was a, it was a, ah, tourist locale and there was plenty for the serviceman to do.
CA: Um-hm.
LM: Course it was a British island, so there were British troops there and there was an American Naval Base there as well. One of the interesting things that happened to me while I was there, was, ah, after I got out of high school, one of my friends went in the Navy and my mother held a party for him, and while I was in Bermuda I was walking down the street in Bermuda and walked right into this man that I’d gone to high school with, that my mother had given the party for.
CA: Wow, in Bermuda.
LM: You can talk about odds.
CA: It’s a small world.
LM: And so we got reacquainted. He was there passing through on a ship, when it just stopped off for a couple of days.

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Transcriptions

Florence-Lauderdale Public Library
Interview with Leroy Makinson
June 8, 2011
Florence, Alabama
Conducted by Clint Alley and Rhonda Haygood
Clip 1
Clint Alley: Well, today is June 8, 2011. We’re at the Florence-Lauderdale Public Library with Mr. Leroy Makinson. Makinson...am I saying that right?
Leroy Makinson: That’s correct.
CA: Okay, and I’m Clint Alley and we’re here with Rhonda Haygood. Mr. Makinson, you, we'll start out by just asking you, if you don’t mind telling us, when and where you were born.
LM: I was born on May the 14th of 1929 in Council Bluffs, Iowa on the Missouri River and across from Omaha, Nebraska.
CA: How, how did you wind up in Florence?
LM: Ah, well, after I got out of the service, they passed a GI bill for Korean War veterans, so I went off to school and went to Iowa State University and studied engineering and I went to work afterwards for Alcoa up in, ah, they had a plant similar to the one they had out here at Reynolds, in size and scope, and, ah, as an engineer and then several years later, Reynolds contacted me because I knew somebody at this plant that I’d gone to school with and they offered me a job, so I came down here in 1958. I stayed here until 1986 and I was transferred to Richmond, Virginia. I held various jobs out here; I was an industrial engineer and a supervisor and a manager of the department for eight years and then I was a division engineer in, in Virginia.
CA: Um-hm. Okay.
LM: Travelled around quite a bit.
CA: Okay. Ah, and you were in the United States Air Force?
LM: That’s correct.
CA: Okay, how did you wind up in the Air Force? Were you drafted?
LM: No, I graduated from high school in 1947 and I went to work for the Union Pacific Railroad, which I had worked for during World War II, when I was sixteen years old, when they were desperate for young men of any kind. And then I went to work for them after I got out of high school and I worked for a year and then, ah, repairing steam engines of all things, the old steamers. So, ah, in 1948 somehow I got interested in going into the service and my brother had joined the Army in June of that year and in August of 1948 I joined the Air Force. The Air Force had been separated from – it was just the Army Air Force, or Army, until 1947, and they separated it in late ’47 into a separate service and so I joined in 1948 with the promise that I could go to a school. And so I picked out – I said, “Well, I want to be an aircraft mechanic.” And they had just started the jet airplanes, so I said, “I want to go to school and be a jet airplane mechanic.” So, eventually, after I went to service, they, a few months later, after I went through my basic training, they sent me to Rantoul, Illinois where I went to school for nine months to be a airplane mechanic and then, ah, this was right at the end of the Berlin air lift, that was going on in Germany at that time and they needed propeller mechanics so they converted me with some additional training that made me a propeller airplane mechanic. And I ended up in Massachusetts and then later transferred to Bermuda and that was in September of 1949, when I went to Bermuda. Of course the Korean War began on June the 25th, 1950 and immediately the United States was involved because they were afraid that Russia was gonna get involved, so they sent hundreds and hundreds of airplanes, bombers and other pieces of equipment to Europe because they were afraid that the Russians would somehow intervene since they did have an interest in North Korea.
CA: Yeah.
LM: They had taken over North Korea at the end of World War II and the United States, of course, took the southern half and that’s why they ended up with what they call the 38th parallel so we figured that they—the interest of Russia was involved in Europe as well, so, the United States transferred a lot of forces to Europe, so we repaired airplanes. And I stayed in Bermuda I think about twenty-two months and in July of 1951 they transferred me back to the States and I went to Selfridge Air Force Base in—north of Detroit, Michigan in Mount Clemens, Michigan and I was in Air-Sea Rescue. They put me on a flying crew. So that year that I was there I spent a lot of hours in the air. That was back in the days when the Air Force had lots of pilots and not as many planes after World War II and, so, we had more, we had more pilots than we had planes and the pilots had to fly so many hours a month to get their flight pay and I, of course, I had to do it too and I had to fly four hours a month, but, because they were, had such a shortage of pilots, I mean, of planes, I flew three hundred and some hours that year, you know. And we would, ah, tra—, do training flights or fly rescue and we trained parachute jumpers you know we’d jump out and, and the planes that we flew could land either on the water or on snow or, and they were fairly large airplanes that would hold fifteen or twenty people. And so I did that until July of 1952. I might add that, of course, like everyone else in the service at that time, once the war started in July of 1950, they had to – the President of the United States, Harry Truman, then added everybody an extra year of service, they just gave us twelve months extra service and so what started out to be three years became four years.
CA: So did you ever, ah, jump out of a plane with a parachute, yourself?
LM: No, but I would have. Of course we wore parachutes and the parachutes that we wore were, looked like, they had, they were just a front chute, ah we had a harness that we – and it had, a, two big D clips up here [Mr. Makinson indicates the location of the clips just below each shoulder] and when we put those on, you’d have to tighten them up real tight. Then we’d leave the parachute pack itself by the back door, and then, of course, you could run out of, ‘cause if you’re up in the cockpit you don’t have much room and, ah, so we’d run by the back door and just grab one of those chutes and clip it on and, but, you know, if they ever caught on fire, I, I was g—, I was out, I was gone.
CA: You knew exactly where that parachute was.
LM: And they’d tell you how to do it, you know. CA: Um-hm.
LM: When to pull it and whether you’re upside down or straight down or face-up or whatever and show you how to pull the chute so that you wouldn’t get caught in your chute as it opened and so forth. But no, I never really did have to jump. But it was an interesting year; I, I enjoyed that stint in Michigan. I enjoyed my stint on Bermuda, because obviously, it was a, it was a, ah, tourist locale and there was plenty for the serviceman to do.
CA: Um-hm.
LM: Course it was a British island, so there were British troops there and there was an American Naval Base there as well. One of the interesting things that happened to me while I was there, was, ah, after I got out of high school, one of my friends went in the Navy and my mother held a party for him, and while I was in Bermuda I was walking down the street in Bermuda and walked right into this man that I’d gone to high school with, that my mother had given the party for.
CA: Wow, in Bermuda.
LM: You can talk about odds.
CA: It’s a small world.
LM: And so we got reacquainted. He was there passing through on a ship, when it just stopped off for a couple of days.